Keep your promise

Illinois Democrats have scored a political trifecta: With veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly and an incumbent governor, they ought to be unstoppable for the foreseeable future.

But the 2014 election already looms large, starting at the top of the ticket. Even now there's talk about who might challenge Gov. Pat Quinn in a primary just 16 months away.

Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley seems to be flirting with a run for governor. Attorney General Lisa Madigan seems to be playing hard to get. The unions that put money and muscle behind Quinn's 2010 primary opponent, Dan Hynes, may be furious enough with Quinn to support a candidate to be named later.

Quinn, who squeaked out a victory in 2010 just weeks after a Tribune/WGN poll put his approval rating at 28 percent, is even less popular today. Last month, he polled a miserable 26 percent. Those new Democratic supermajorities threaten to turn the governor into an afterthought.

So voters don't like him, and lawmakers don't have to listen to him. That makes it hard to look like a leader — or a winner. That's not just Quinn's problem. It's the party's problem too.

The 2014 election will be framed by a single question: Will Democrats curb runaway spending — read: pension reform — so they can keep their promise to roll back last year's 67 percent income tax rate increase, sold to voters as a stopgap measure?

Letting it expire as promised will require Quinn & Co. to take some steps that won't be popular with that key Democratic constituency, the public employee unions.

Quinn has shown lately that he's willing to take on the unions — refusing to give them raises the taxpayers can't afford, closing unneeded state facilities and eliminating thousands of union jobs. He was booed off the stage on Governor's Day at the state fair. The unions are likely to do their best to boo him out of office.

But taxpayers are unhappy that the giant tax increase has done nothing to repair the state's finances — $9 billion in unpaid bills, barrel-bottom credit ratings and some $200 billion in debts and unfunded obligations to state retirees. All of the money raised by the tax increase is going to pay pension costs. Everything else — social programs, education, state parks, law enforcement — has been slashed.

The tax increase is supposed to start phasing out two weeks before the governor is sworn in in 2015. So candidates for governor in 2014 will have to explain to voters how they'll craft a budget without that money — or they'll have to come out in favor of extending it.

Every candidate will have to talk about the tax increase, over and over and over and over.

Legislative candidates weren't spared the income tax question in this year's election, and most of them staunchly declared their intent to let the tax increase expire as scheduled. They pledged to complete the pension and other reforms to offset the $7 billion in revenue now being provided by that "temporary" tax hike. Voters took them at their word.

So if there's an ounce of truth to the scuttlebutt that Democrats might attempt a lame-duck vote to make the tax increase permanent, it's a cowardly and egregious breach of trust.

Lawmakers: Don't you dare.

That tax cut didn't hurt you in the 2012 election — most likely because you vowed that "temporary" would mean "temporary." By 2014, we'll see if you keep your promise.